On Oliver Stone

I saw W. today, and it was pretty much the TV movie I expected. But I used to ride for Oliver Stone! The Doors had me open, but by that point in 1991 I guess I’d already seen Wall Street on cable, and maybe rented Talk Radio. An extremely impressionable college kid, I couldn’t get the laidback hippie cadence out of my voice for hours after seeing Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison. (Two favorite scenes: Morrison getting hit on by a licking-his-lips Andy Warhol at the Factory, then fucking Nico in an elevator; Morrison blithely explaining his poetry book to a bunch of reporters (“I guess they didn’t… understand it”), then fucking one of them directly after their press junket.) But after Any Given Sunday nine years ago, Stone lost me.

The argument never comes up anymore, but whenever I found myself in a “Jennifer Lopez can’t act” discussion, I always defended her with U-Turn, and her best role this side of Selena as femme fatale Grace McKenna. No one I debate with cares whether or not Cameron Diaz can act, but her best role might’ve been Christina Pagniacci in Any Given Sunday, the flick that totally vaulted Jamie Foxx over the top in Hollywood. Since then though, Oliver Stone’s been coasting. I saw World Trade Center but skipped Alexander back in 2004; maybe the 3-hour director’s cut DVD is better but I doubt it. Stone seems to be a hired hand nowadays instead of the auteur-type filmmaker he used to be. Natural Born Killers has got to be one of the 90s best films; even the soundtrack was killer (Nine Inch Nails’ “Something I Can Never Have,” Cowboy Junkies’ cover of the Velvet Underground classic “Sweet Jane”).

With my love for The Doors, I was hoping the Stone-helmed Janis Joplin project would manifest, but it imploded instead. (With who, Pink as Joplin?) Maybe Stone will find his groove back in the 10s, or at least lay off the politics. (Nixon, JFK, Bush…)